Kerry wrote:
> Catching on to the talent of George Pelecanos late,
journalist and noir
> author Vern Smith was so impressed that he tore
through the entire ouevre
> in about two months, declaring Pelecanos the best
crime writer of our time.
>
> Maybe it's this perspective that has allowed Smith
to see in the writer's
> latest, titled "Hard Revolution", what others
overlook in their eagerness
> to pat the icon's back: "George Pelecanos is losing
his edge."
I haven't read _Hard Revolution_, but in an interesting bit
of verisimilitude, I *did* just complete _Right As Rain_, the
first of his Derek Strange/Terry Quinn novels. It is my
initial exposure to Pelecanos' work, and based upon the
experience as a whole, it most like will be my last.
SPOILER ALERT
What I liked about Pelecanos' work:
Good pace, wonderfully balanced descriptions, a really good
*feel* for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Pelecanos'
sense of place is well- developed, and as in all the best
crime fiction, the city itself is a viable character in the
story. He's got a sense of humor. His action sequences are
also well-done.
What I didn't like about Pelecanos' work:
Characterization, characterization, characterization. I
didn't believe it when Derek Strange (who is black and in his
50s) spoke, especially to other African-American characters.
All too often it was like looking at a photograph of someone,
as opposed to seeing the actual person. The form was there,
and the slang and idioms were assiduously inserted into the
dialogue, but that's just it: it didn't *sound* right to me.
It "sounded" like a carefully constructed on a well-founded
base. It wasn't organic. It seemed too self-conscious.
Perhaps (as I mentioned in an earlier post) Pelecanos
suffered by comparison to Walter Moseley's marvelous
_Fearless Jones_, which I finished just previous to starting
_Right As Rain_. Moseley has a great ear, and the cadences,
rhythms and rejoinders of his characters flow effortless
(after all, the toughest thing about doing anything is making
it look *easy*!).
Back to Pelecanos, this seemed like a fellow intent on
showing the grey in people alongside their good and bad
sides, at least with his protagonists
(particularly Terry Quinn), and I think that he failed by and
large in this ambitious undertaking. His villains are all the
way bad. This in and of itself isn't something to make me
want to stop reading, but since he also insists on writing in
that problematic revolving third person limited omniscient
P.O.V. (I know, I know, I'm not looking to open *THAT* can of
worms again!), and he's telling the story at least in part
from the perspectives of the white-trash country hicks who
are working as drug running mules and from that of the most
successful black drug lord in the city, he's got a real
opportunity to let the reader inside the heads of these
caracters and make them *interesting*.
He does not. His "bad guys" have no good spots, no balance to
them, and as a result, no humanity. His dumb-ass cracker
mules (drunken father and short- man-with-a-big-gun-complex
meth-head son) could easily be extras in a Kid Rock video.
You just know they've still got their mullets. As for the
drug- lord, hmmmm expensive suits, snappy patter, flat
characterization and mouthing racial cliches? Didn't I see
this guy in that Wesley Snipes movie
_New Jack City_? I know I saw his muscular,
always-wearing-sunglasses-no- matter-the-time-of-day
side-kick in it.
Another thing that's uneven about these villains is their
level of menace. Are we supposed to be afraid of these guys?
There's a point at which they double-cross and kill a couple
of Columbians they're in business with, and they seem
*almost* scary. Later, when there is the much-anticipated
show- down between Strange/Quinn and these two ludicrous
country-fucks, wherein Quinn gets the jump on them out in
their barn/drug warehouse, in a make- shift "bar" the
short-guy son has constructed, and when the guns start
blazing, the short bad guy misses with his shot, because
(wait for it.... wait for it....) he catches the heel of his
built-up, four-inch heeled cowboy boot on the rail running
along the base of the bar he's oh-so nonchalantly leaning up
against, and Quinn drills him. PLEASE!
Although Pelecanos is good at constructing the impending
showdown between these two sides in a methodical, believable
manner, there is no tension, I'm never uncertain of the
outcome. Conquering evil (at least in literature) only seems
an accomplishment when the dragon seems like a DRAGON, and so
on. Great heroes are defined by the great menace they face
down and overcome (or in the case of a good noir tale, which
they face down and succumb to). These creeps never stood a
chance, and the violence late on in the book seems pretty
much anticlimactic.
The thing that frustrated me the most about this book was how
Pelecanos teases the reader. He shows flashes of great,
polished writing here and there, some of his dialogue is
quite good, but in the end there were too many cliches, too
many corners cut, too much shifting of perspective with no
rhyme nor reason (some times in the middle of the chapter)
for my tastes. I was left largely unsatisfied by _Right As
Rain_, which surprised me, because I picked it up based
largely on some of the praise I've seen lavished on his work
here at RARA AVIS. Now, Al Guthrie's _Won't Hurt At All_,
through which I'm wending my way at present, is another story
entirely...
It goes without saying that this is only one man's opinion,
so take it for what it's worth, and if we disagree on
Pelecanos (as I have in the past with several here whose
opinions I value highly over such writers as James Ellroy),
well and good. In the end, I wanted to like his work, I gave
it every chance, I just didn't buy it. I'm sure he's a great
guy and we'd enjoy a few beers together, and in all
likelihood he wouldn't think much of my writing either.;)
That said, bear in mind that I saw such potential for a
better, more satisfying read in _Right As Rain_ than I found.
As to "losing his edge," if his earlier stuff was better than
this, I'd say those claiming he is losing are probably spot
on. Of course in order to confirm that, I'd have read more of
Pelecanos' writing, and I don't see that happening. What with
Al Guthrie to finish, Jack Bludis waiting in the wings and
Joe Gores' stuff hot on his trail, I think I've got my hands
full for a little while!
All the Best-
Brian
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